In the technical field of waste disposal, it is known that the biogas generated by the natural fermentation of solid organic waste masses contained in storage wells, also known as biogas capturing wells, is extracted, and the biogas extracted from the wells is collected by means of a biogas collection plant. The biogas capturing wells together with the biogas collection plant form a so-called biogas capturing system.
A landfill in general comprises a large number of wells, in the order of fifteen per hectare of landfill surface. The biogas collection plant is composed of several biogas collection stations, each of which is connected to the large number of wells, in general 10 to 20, by means of pipes to collect the biogas produced by said wells. In the biogas collection stations, a first discharge of the condensate generated by the biogas is performed.
The wells are different from one another and the minimum parameters that must be considered to optimize capturing of the biogas are the flow rate, the concentration of methane and oxygen in the biogas mixture and the depression applied to the well for the capturing.
Regulation of the biogas capturing by the wells is performed manually for each well, at best once every two days, according to manual analyses of flow rate, depression and concentration of methane and oxygen in the biogas using portable instruments which can be connected at predefined points of the biogas collection stations. Complete manual regulation of each well requires approximately 10 minutes.
A medium-sized landfill in general has a capturing system consisting of approximately 120 wells connected to approximately 10 biogas collection stations. The analysis and manual regulation of an entire capturing system obviously results in low efficiency and precision. In particular, the regulation technique described above has the following problems:                the interpretation of the regulation is subjective, and therefore the efficiency of the capturing system depends on the ability of the operator in charge;        the capturing system is not able to track the inevitable physical changes in the biogas throughout the day and any variations in suction conditions in the capturing lines during the day due to imperfect operation of the machines that generate the depression in the pipes of said lines; and        impossibility of knowing the status of the capturing lines in terms of presence or absence of condensate, which limits capturing of the biogas.        